of sr. Sebald. —But this affected style did not, perhaps, spread much farther than the Rhenish school; it is certain that the statuary at St. Sebald, in Nuremberg, shows none of these qualities. TWO of the statues from this church are here given (Jigs. 4, 5), and are works of the close of the fourteenth century. Figure 4 is one of the wise virgins. Full of confidence, she holds up her lamp with both hands, and her ample, flowing drapery does not conceal the firmness of her bearing. In Figure 5 we see one of the foolish virgins. She stands with limbs relaxed, a picture of despair; her head droops and her clasped hands hang helplessly down, clinging as if instinctively to the oilless lamp, the sign of her careless sloth. Nuremberg was quite a centre of Gothic sculpture during the fourteenth century, for, besides these sculp tures of St. Sebald, there are the rich portal-sculptures of St. Laurence and the numerous statues of the Church of Our Lady, attributed to Sebald Schonhofer.
English was no great development of Gothic sculp ture in England as in France and Italy, and we look in vain for portals and façades crowded with statues and bas-reliefs. But in one branch of sculpture—in funeral monuments—English artists in the thirteenth cen tury attained to a high degree of excellence. In these they showed con siderable talent for portraiture and realistic treatment. An example is here given (p1. 22, fig. 3) in the figure of Duke Robert of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror, taken from his monument, which was executed toward the end of the thirteenth century and is in Gloucester Cathedral. Clad in a cloak and coat of mail, both hands laid on his sword, in an attitude as if he were stepping, with legs crossed, he is a lifelike and individual figure.
Gothic in the period we have been reviewing Italy also had experienced a revolution in sculpture. It came at the time when France had reached the point of greatest perfection, but before the other countries of Europe had fully entered into the Gothic movement. The transition from one style of sculpture to the other can be studied in France in every stage, but in Italy its causes are enveloped in obscurity. No natural or indigenous growth prepared the way for the school of the Pisani; there is no bridge by which we can traverse the chasm separating the barbarous sculpture of the Italian Romanesque from the interesting productions of Nicola Pisano (•orn about 12oo and died about 1278).
Nicola Pisano: Pisan time had conic in Italy for a change in the art, and Nicola gave the necessary impulse. He flourished in Tuscany from the middle to near the close of the thirteenth century, and his greatest work is the pulpit or the Baptistery of Pisa, which he carved in 126o. His new departure consisted in the invention, not of new subjects, but of powerful individual types of humanity, and lie was thoroughly successful only in his heads and most of his nude figures. His type was of massive noble figures, like those of classic Rome, without any spark of religious spirit. One panel of his Pisan pulpit is given on Plate 23 The three wise men are approaching the Child, who is seated on his mother's knees; behind stand Joseph and an angel, while on the left appear the fiery steeds of the magi. The interest centres around the
figures of the Virgin and the two kneeling magi. The Virgin especially is a massive figure full of power—the incarnation of the material sublime. Other works wholly or in part by Nicola are the pulpit at Siena, a relief at Lucca, and the Shrine of San Domenico at Bologna. Nicola's cold and simply human art, grand as it was, raised little response among contem porary artists: the time had not yet come for divorcing art from religion.
None of the artists who worked with Nicola adopted his style. The greatt.st of them, his son, Pisano, was the leader in the Gothic movement, though he mingled with it a large dose of realism. Giovanni was very unequal in his work, both in artistic conception and in execution. His bas-reliefs are often extravagant and inartistic, as in the pulpit at Pistoja; his single figures and large groups, on the contrary, are generally fine. A good example is the Virgin and Child with adoring angels (p1. 20, fig. 3) over the portal of the Cathedral of Florence. The simple majesty, dignity, and repose of the figures and the broad forms of the drapery make it one of the most admirable of Giovanni's works. Its date is 1301. Another very tine work by him is the monument in San Domenico at Perugia. Ile founded a large school which spread far and wide. He was born in Pisa about 1240, and died in 132o.
Reliefc of the Orz-ieio Calharal.—Close on those of Giovanni there follow a triad of most interesting works—the facade of the Cathedral of Orvieto, Giotto's Campanile, and Andrea Pisano's gates in Florence. Who were the sculptors of the four relief-covered piers at Orvieto is not known, but they were certainly the most talented of their time. Their style is by no means equal, as can be seen from the two examples given on Plate 21. The first is taken from the Creation pier (fig. 2). The first scene is that in the left-hand lower corner. Above, from the starry heavens, the divine hand projects, shedding rays below, and the Spirit of God, in the form of a dove, descends to brood over the waters. Christ stands on the earth, and behind him are two adoring angels; in his left hand he grasps the book of life, and with his right he creates the fishes and monsters of the deep, whose shadowy forms can be seen sporting in the billows, while on the opposite bank stands a phalanx of birds for whose creation the divine fiat has already gone forth. The next scene is the cre ation of the animal kingdom; the camel, lion, horse, bull, sheep, goat, and dog are standing before the divine Creator. The upper scene is a double one. On the left is the creation of man, who, with knees relaxed, stands reverentially before his Creator, as if not yet awakened to full conscious ness; farther to the right the man is reclining, asleep, on the earth, while Christ. draws from his side the rib which is to be formed into woman.